VantureBeat reports that antivirus firm F-Secure has released a free automated removal tool for the Flashback Trojan that has infected so many Mac OS X systems. The removal tool, available here, is in a zip file. Once you download and unzip it, follow the instructions to find the virus on your system.

Registered sex offenders of all designations residing in the state of New York will no longer be able to interact with children in some online console and PC games. New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office has convinced several platform holders and game companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Warner Bros. and Disney Interactive Media Group to shut down the communication privileges of registered sex offenders.

According to data from a new market tracking app called VU Global (Distimo and CSS Insight), the Apple App Store enjoyed $5.41 million in daily sales throughout the month of January. The report breaks the figures down by iOS platforms: iPhone saw $3.34 million, while iPad saw $2.07 million in daily sales during the month of January.

"The strong growth in downloads and revenue for Apple and Android comes at a time when consumers typically rein back their spending after Christmas", said Paolo Pescatore, director of applications and content at CCS Insight.

According to CNBC's freshly released All-America Economic survey, Apple products are now in over half of America's homes. The report notes that 51 percent, or 55 million, of U.S. households now own at least one Apple device (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac or Macbook). The survey says that the average household has 1.6 Apple devices, but also concludes that most Americans own three Apple devices. Around one-quarter of those surveyed said that they planned to buy one more Apple device in the next year.

We have heard whispers that iOS developers use companies to manipulate their app rankings on the Apple App Store, but one such developer speaks frankly with Digiday about the practice and why he'd like to see it go away. Applications of iOS platforms have a hard time getting visibility on Apple's App Store because there are so many apps competing for the same business. 

Taken with a grain of salt and small amount of indifference, a study from data-driven review site Bundle that found that Mac users were cooler than PC users is kind of amusing. Their conclusion, based on an analysis of the spending habits of 700,000 PC and Mac buyers, is that Mac users were more "fashion-forward" and "style-conscious" than PC users.

Last week EA Mobile removed Battlefield 3: Aftershock from the Apple App Store because users complained about stability and a lack of content. Now we have learned that another recently released iOS title, The Simpsons: Tapped Out, has been yanked from Apple's App Store. This time out EA says that it pulled the popular free app from the marketplace because of an "overwhelmingly positive" reaction to the game. 

As reported by CNN (by way of Eurogamer), Apple is now valued at $500 billion - as much as the gross national product of countries such as Poland, Sweden, Saudi Arabia or Belgium. The company is also closing in on Microsoft, which was once valued at $600 billion (it's currently worth about $267 billion). Only three other companies have managed to surpass that milestone number: ExxonMobil, Cisco, and General Electric.

Proview Electronics has opened up another front in its war against Apple of the iPad name: the United States. The company that is suing Apple in China over use of the "iPad" brand in China, has filed an additional lawsuit in the Superior Court of the State of California in Santa Clara. The lawsuit, filed on February 17, alleges that Apple committed fraud when it used a front company - a law firm called IP Application Development Ltd. - to purchase the iPad trademark from Proview on Dec. 23, 2009 for 35,000 British pounds ($55,000 USD).

Despite complaints about poor working conditions and suicides, people in China looking for a job continue to flock to Foxconn. A Reuters UK article written by James Pomfret and filed after visiting Foxconn's main recruitment center (Longhua, China) claims that thousands of workers from rural regions wait on a daily basis outside the company's plant to take aptitude tests in the hope of gaining employment.

Earlier this month Electronic Arts released the free-to-play, ad-supported Battlefield 3: Aftershock game on the Apple App Store. It seemed to be doing well, but apparently the game has been yanked. The sudden removal of the game isn't all that much of a mystery: EA looked at the negative reviews the game was getting and decided that it needed to make some drastic changes. The average user review score for the game was right around 2.5 stars.

If you missed last night's episode of ABC's Nightline, it has made its way to YouTube. If you prefer to catch it at its source, ABC News, then you can simply follow this link. Why would you want to watch Nightline? Last night the late-night news program ran an 18-minute long story on Foxconn, the notorious assembly plant used by Apple and other technology companies that has been accused of treating its workers with much disregard and a lack of compassion.

Apple and China-based graphic display maker Proview squared off in a Shanghai court Wednesday, as the battle over the use of the "iPad" trademark continued to heat up in China. Apple argued before the Shanghai Pudong New Area People's Court that banning sales of the iPad would not be in the best interest of China's economy.

AppleInsider reports that Foxconn shuffled employees around when inspectors from the Fair Labor Association recently took a tour of some of their facilities. A non-governmental labor rights group said that Foxconn relocated under-age workers to different areas of the plant during the tour before the FLA inspections commenced.

Over the weekend some modern-day hucksters decided to put up "Pokémon Yellow" on Apple's App store. The app, which purported to be "just like the original" and has since been yanked from the store by Apple, made it into the number 3 position on the store's paid app charts. The app certainly confused plenty of customers, who gleefully plunked down .99 cents to play an authentic Pokémon game on their iOS device of choice, only to find that it crashed when launching.

ABC's popular late night news program Nightline, will offer viewers an exclusive inside look at the working conditions at one of Foxconn's notorious assembly plants on Tuesday evening. The program promises an "unprecedented" look inside Apple’s Foxconn plants in China, which have been criticized as being sweatshops and labor camps with poor working conditions that treat their employees horribly.

Xie Xianghui, the lawyer representing Shenzhen Proview Technology in China, said that the Intermediate People’s Court in Huizhou (a city in the southern China province of Guangdong) ruled on Friday that distributors should stop selling Apple's iPad devices  in the region. The company is in a bitter dispute with Apple in China because it owns the rights to the "iPad" trademark there. Under Chinese law, the company has the power to stop imports and exports of the product. 

Apple's social gaming network currently on the iOS will be supported by Mac OS X with the release of Update 10.8 Mountain Lion, according to Edge. Update 10.8 Mountain Lion is a paid update that will be released this summer. Like its iOS counterpart, Game Center on Mac will include support for achievements, scoreboards, online play, game invites and matchmaking, and add cross-platform play and in-game voice chat.

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology Conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that his company is committed to working with manufacturing partners that offer its employees a "fair and safe work environment."

"Where they can earn competitive wages and they can voice their concerns freely. Apple's suppliers must live up to this to do business with Apple," he said.

Chinese company Shenzhen Proview Technology said today that it plans to enforce its "iPad" trademark in the country further by asking customs officials to ban imports and exports of Apple’s most popular device. With all of Apple's iPad devices being manufactured in the country (through Foxconn) this could prove to be a serious threat to its business, because the Proview has already found success on the local level with getting the iPad removed in one unnamed city, according to an Associated Press story.

Apple is back in court assailing Samsung with two patents it obtained in December of last year. In documents filed Tuesday in the San Jose federal court, Apple used freshly-granted US Patents 8,074,172 and 8,086,604 to seek a temporary injunction against Samsung. From the patent descriptions:

According to this VentureBeat report some customers are so upset over Apple using Chinese labor to assemble their products under substandard working conditions that they have decide to protest with a petition. This effort isn't just a handful of people either - a group of consumers will deliver a petition signed by 250,000 customers to the company's store at Grand Central Station in New York City tomorrow and in other locations around the globe.

Apple is apparently cracking down on applications that they consider to be clones of other popular apps on its App Store. Evidence of such a crackdown comes from web site VideoGameWriters, who noted that one particular app developer - who is fond of using "familiar titles" for his apps - seems to have less of them available on the APP Store today.

According to a Touch Arcade forum user, a company has been offering to boost the ranking of free apps using bots on Apple's App Store. According to a user named "walterkaman," the unnamed company will set up automated and repeated downloads of a client's app in order to push it into Apple's Top Free charts. While the company was not named and the story has - as of yet - remained unverified, it has caught the attention of Apple.

Apple has hired a former Xbox Live marketing person to head up its app business in Europe. The latest top executive to land at Apple is the former head of Xbox Live marketing Robin Burrowes. Burrowes who joined the company earlier this month, will serve as the company’s new head of App Store Marketing for iTunes Europe.

Burrowes worked at Microsoft for seven years, handling the product, business, and marketing for Xbox Live in several regions including Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Responding to a recent and rather extensive report on the horrific working conditions at Foxconn in the New York Times, Apple's CEO Tim Cook came out strongly against it in a memo purportedly sent to the entire company. The article, at least in Apple's view, came to the conclusion that the iPad maker either knew about the abuses at these assembly plants in China and ignored them, or they simply didn’t care.

Apple continues to prove that whoever runs its approval department for iOS apps may not be paying attention. As this C&VG story points out the latest offenders is a Mario Kart rip-off called 'Mole Kart.' Available for right around $2, Mole Kart looks suspiciously like Mario Kart.

Atari says that, while it admires the work of independent developers, it must defend its intellectual property. The company made its comments after it was revealed yesterday that it had been using its tight relationship with Apple to take down games that had a "passing resemblance" to games in its extensive back catalog of classic games arcade games. Black Powder Media claimed that it took its games Vector Tanks, Vector Tanks Extreme, and Vector Tanks 3 off the app store after Atari claimed the games infringed on its Battlezone IP.

According to new data released by app analytics firm Flurry, 1.2 billion applications were downloaded for Android and iOS devices between December 25 and December 31. Earlier in the week the group predicted that in that same period it expected new Android and iOS device activations to be right around 6.8 million. Now they are saying that the number is probably closer to 20 million.

According to iOS game developer Black Powder Media, Atari is removing games from the App Store (with the help of Apple, of course) that resemble anything from its extensive back catalog of classic games. The company developed a game called Vector Tanks 3, which bears a slight resemblance to Battlezone. Atari has also threatened legal action against iOS developers who are developing games that it deems are rip-offs of its owned IPs.